@Mark – you know better than most people in the real estate world – that how most of us are going about building links is a lot of work and takes more effort than it should. I hope your community blog takes off. I still also like the idea of creating a site something like Nanaimo Information but from a real estate agent’s perspective.

I would also then add them to my sphere to get regular mailings I send out, things of value like a coupon for a free car wash, coupon for a pumpkin at Thanksgiving, etc. I send something different every month so people remember me and don’t feel like I’m sending them junk mail, in fact they love it that I actually send cool stuff.

I just started http://www.realestaterag.com. I am trying to build more a community and worry less about getting links to my real estate site.

Also try sending one of these posts (with the permission of the interviewee) to your local newspaper for publication. At least you can make an introduction to the editor or RE section editor who may use one of your articles for publication in the future.

@James – this isn’t really about generating leads through blogging but more about how to create a community in part through blogging. I think a lot of us spend a good deal of time writing content that WE don’t even expect consumers to be engaged by. I know most of my consumer centric posts are geared at one thing – to get them to my IDX. Just thinking that if we can connect and build a community – we wouldn’t have to work as hard – wouldn’t have to write as many “forced” market stats posts – wouldn’t have to work as hard building links as people would link to us. I don’t know what this looks like from a consumer-centric end yet, but I definitely think it is worth investigating.

@Jolenta – I think you are already showing a lot of your personality in what you post – maybe too much when it comes to politics (but we can talk about that later). Transparancy is good but I think we as individuals have the ability to decide what we want to show to the world wide web.

@Cal – blogging about things you like is definitely an improvement in my eyes than blogging for serps – ultimiately don’t really know how successfull you can be blogging about things that do not interest you – just feel like there is something most of us our missing to get consumers talking to us on our sites – they talk to each other on city-data, they ask questions on trulia – why are they not engaging us – the local professionals on our websites – why haven’t we gained their trust or have we not given them the opportunity to really talk to us. We have a lot of data on what our visitors do on our site but a lot of it is a one way conversation – maybe the key is to create dialog.

Regarding user interaction on a blog, I do like the idea of putting more of yourself out there. Exposing more of your interests, hobbies, and life out side or real estate. These types of topics will should at least let the reader know you as the writing are putting more of yourself out there. This is where I see the social networking technologies come into play. Where a potential client can put your name in G and find you in more than one place and hopefully notice that you are active in more than one place. Hopefully all of the different online exposure will allow the user to develop some level of trust with you.

find a tight nitch that is not being served well, and start writing stuff that they would be interested in. Of course you need to through some real estate topics into the mix and be sure to brand your blog as a real estate blog and identify yourself well so they know who to call upon if they need your help.

Such a tight nitch might not be good to have a blog for on your main real estate site and if that is the case just start a stand alone wordpress blog for it, but be sure to link back to your main site and to your IDX page if you have it.